Observers should be impartial and accurate. We want to know where you are, who else is there and what they are doing. Are you in a cafe, a shop, at a movie, on the street, in school? Who is around, a store clerk, six lawyers on a lunch break, a dozen bikers, a child and her mother? What are they doing, picking their noses, talking about the new season of 24, eating, fidgeting, smoking, smiling, crying, fighting, dancing, talking? What are they saying, and who are they saying it to? As in the examples from the 1930s (See Our Predecessors); no politics and no snarkiness, just observe the minutiae happening wherever you are.
There are two ways to participate:
1)
Email your observations to observations@januarythe20th.
2)
Tweet using the hashtag #jan20th (http://twitter.com/
Twitter
(www.twitter.com) is a new social
networking site, similar to Facebook but simpler. You have a profile and update
your status by posting what is called a tweet, a message of less than 140
characters. Those people following you on Twitter will see your updates and you
will see theirs. By putting a marker in front of a post, called a hashtag, you
can make posts traceable. Placing # in an update does this. For example, if you
tweet with #jan20th we can trace this, and it will go directly to our website. Hashtags
have already had a profound impact in the media, providing people with ways to
stream and collect mass observations quickly during times of crisis, such as
the Bombay bombings last November and the U.S.
Air crash in New York City
last week.
*Media can contact us at editor@januarythe20th.com.
